SDCC 2013 – NBC’s HANNIBAL Panel Recap

NBC’s Hannibal is one of the shows that took me a while to connect with, but by the end of season one, I was hooked. That’s one of the reasons I was really looking forward to Thursday’s panel at SDCC.

As you may have seen, season one ended on one hell of a cliffhanger, with Will Graham locked up and accused of multiple murders, while Hannibal Lecter was able to escape suspicion.

Show creator, Bryon Fuller told fans during Thursday panel that season 2 will start out with a two part episode and then episode three will be a trial, which they have just finished filming. He also said that the opening of season two will be sort of a new pilot for the show, so it will be a great jumping on point for people who haven’t seen the show yet. It will also be good for current fans because all the characters are in very different places than they were last season.

In attendance at the panel were Hugh Dancy, Bryan Fuller, David Slade, and Martha De Laurentiis.

The panel led off with a reel of the most gruesome kills of the show, after which Fuller told a story about just how stupid executives can be. He said that there were generally never any complaints from the suits about the gory scenes with the exception of the episode where the killer flays open his victims into angels. The problem they had wasn’t with all the blood and gore, or the intensely graphic nature of the bodies. No, they had a much more important problem… you could see the dead people’s butt cracks. His solution? He filled the butt cracks with blood to obscure them an everyone was happy.

Fuller also spent time talking about how much he loved the original Novel, Red Dragon by Thomas Harris, that serves as the inspiration for the show. He even told the audience that he was referring back to the book until the last day of shooting.

Producer, Martha De Laurentiis, also mentioned that David Slade wants to find a way to fit the original ending of the book into the series if possible.

While the actor who plays Hannibal wasn’t in attendance, De Laurentiis talked about how he got the role. She said that they had him screen test because he was not really well known to US audiences. She went on to say that he feels Mikkelsen now owns the role. Fuller added : “It was about finding an actor who had a specific take on the character,” said Fuller. “He said he didn’t want to play Anthony Hopkins or Brian Cox. He wanted to play Satan.”